Laptop computers are not investments... Its like buying a car... Macs are like Toyotas and PCs are like Fords. ie. at least with mac, your item will not completely depreciate in value in the first year
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2yrs on - here's a list of why I probably won't buy a MacBook Pro
- Thread starter joefinan
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Very unusual problems which none of my friends or I have
expierienced.
Windows is a joke. How could anyone want to go back to that?
expierienced.
Windows is a joke. How could anyone want to go back to that?
Funny, a crappy Toshiba laptop is precisely what pushed me into purchasing a MBP.
Indeed, and a crappy Toshiba laptop is precisely what's pushing me to purchase a MBP
Please keep your fanboi attitudes to yourself. High prices lead to high expectations, if Apple does not welcome the high expectations it is very simple: drop the prices.
Can't do that? Suck it up then.
Been an Apple owner since 1988. I have had a MacII, MacIIFx, (2) Quadra 800s, (2) Mirrored G4 1.25Ghz Desktops, (3) iBooks, (1) Powerbook, and 2 months into my new 2.8Ghz iMac, (3) Cinema Displays, (1) LaserWriter Printer. I have only had 2 repair issues. One of the G4 desktop had a failed HD, Apple came to my studio with a new HD and installed it, even though I could have. One of the iBooks had a key pop off. Called Apple, they send out a repair box for free, the iBook was repaired and return shipping was free and was back at my studio within 3 days!
Sorry you have had a bum laptop, but as others have noted your in the minority and not the majority. I do not know why you did not have your issues taken care of by Apple during the first year, even if you did not purchase AppleCare to extend the warranty.
Sorry you have had a bum laptop, but as others have noted your in the minority and not the majority. I do not know why you did not have your issues taken care of by Apple during the first year, even if you did not purchase AppleCare to extend the warranty.
I love how the people are jumping on the OP.
"It's your fault!" "I hate it when people bash things after only trying them once!" "Suck it up and buy a new one!"
Thats ridiculous.
The OP bought a very expensive system that really ended up with bad build quality and he got ripped off on warranty service. I don't know about the UK, but if that keyboard key had popped off here in the US, especially California, and Apple tried to refuse repair under warranty, then they'd be in some serious trouble.
I like how one person said "Windows is a joke" or something like that. I find that hilarious because I've had the exact opposite experience. On both of my Macs (second Mac was a replacement thanks to Flextronics destroying my system with a dead optical drive), I've had OS X (Tiger and Leopard) crash more than I ever had Windows crash in the almost 2 decades I used Windows PCs. I've had to reinstall OS X a number of times, and I'm on my fourth Leopard install now. Ironically, through all of that, Windows XP (on both Macs) has been rock solid. Not a single crash, hiccup, or any type of instability. With Windows, my Mac is easily one of the most stable PCs I've ever seen. But OS X (on both Macs) has bugs, its unstable, and I've had it crash randomly while doing everything from emptying the trash to trying to burn a disc.
Will I buy a Mac again? Absolutely not. The prices are not justified. The middle MacBook with SuperDrive after taxes will cost roughly $1400 here in California depending on where you buy it. Mine was $1408 in LA county. For $1400 at that time, I could have gotten a 17" Windows PC with a dedicated GPU and twice the RAM and a much larger HDD. Now for the same price you can get a 17" system with a 512MB dedicated GPU, twice the RAM, twice the hard drive space spread over two hard drives, HDMI output, etc. with the option of getting blu-ray or HD-DVD internal drives.
OS X may not have Windows "problems", but it has its own set of problems that are equally as bad, just different. I'd rather have to run a spyware sweeper once a week than worry about OS X crashing when I go to empty a couple of text files from the Trash.
Oh and theres also the fact that Apple screwed me and who knows how many others over with the iPod games, trying to force us to repurchase them all. Hah!
"It's your fault!" "I hate it when people bash things after only trying them once!" "Suck it up and buy a new one!"
Thats ridiculous.
The OP bought a very expensive system that really ended up with bad build quality and he got ripped off on warranty service. I don't know about the UK, but if that keyboard key had popped off here in the US, especially California, and Apple tried to refuse repair under warranty, then they'd be in some serious trouble.
I like how one person said "Windows is a joke" or something like that. I find that hilarious because I've had the exact opposite experience. On both of my Macs (second Mac was a replacement thanks to Flextronics destroying my system with a dead optical drive), I've had OS X (Tiger and Leopard) crash more than I ever had Windows crash in the almost 2 decades I used Windows PCs. I've had to reinstall OS X a number of times, and I'm on my fourth Leopard install now. Ironically, through all of that, Windows XP (on both Macs) has been rock solid. Not a single crash, hiccup, or any type of instability. With Windows, my Mac is easily one of the most stable PCs I've ever seen. But OS X (on both Macs) has bugs, its unstable, and I've had it crash randomly while doing everything from emptying the trash to trying to burn a disc.
Will I buy a Mac again? Absolutely not. The prices are not justified. The middle MacBook with SuperDrive after taxes will cost roughly $1400 here in California depending on where you buy it. Mine was $1408 in LA county. For $1400 at that time, I could have gotten a 17" Windows PC with a dedicated GPU and twice the RAM and a much larger HDD. Now for the same price you can get a 17" system with a 512MB dedicated GPU, twice the RAM, twice the hard drive space spread over two hard drives, HDMI output, etc. with the option of getting blu-ray or HD-DVD internal drives.
OS X may not have Windows "problems", but it has its own set of problems that are equally as bad, just different. I'd rather have to run a spyware sweeper once a week than worry about OS X crashing when I go to empty a couple of text files from the Trash.
Oh and theres also the fact that Apple screwed me and who knows how many others over with the iPod games, trying to force us to repurchase them all. Hah!
Yeah, I find that pretty surprising. I had a key pop off and break on my MacBook when it was well out of warranty, and it was replaced for free by my friendly mac dealer - I'm fairly sure the Apple Store would do the same.
I guess you could compare a Toyota to a Mac.
I someone with a 2002 Prius and the main hybrid battery is going bad. Of course, it's out of warranty. So that means an out of pocket expense for them of about $4,000 according to the dealer.
With a Mac, if a unit is out of warranty, you have to pay ridiculous out of pocket costs to repair them as well even for simple things such as a hard drive or optical drive and just about everything else.
Where with Fords (and PCs) they're mostly user serviceable and the user can replace nearly everything at reasonable costs without worrying about destroying their system.
ok, been reading this thread and as i'm in the market now i'll put in my .02.
first the verdict: i'm getting a MBP to reap the benefit of CoreAudio and the generally music-friendly characteristics of OSX. i especially like the "native" MIDI services. aside from working well, i'm naturally drawn to the fact that the OS is designed with music production and performance in mind.
ok, i shared that first to show you i'm not a hater - quite the contrary - but i do have a few gripes, 2 of which can be solved by bootcamping xp (but it's ashame to have to, hence my sharing this), the latter i'm not so sure.
alright. so 2 things i'll miss from windoze are: the little "envelope" icon indicating new mail since last you visitted your inbox. the mac equivalent is the red dot with the number of unread mail in the box, period. but you have to actually visit the inbox to see if there's anything new, which is an unnecessary hardship when it's so easily solved with the new-mail icon. my suggestion for a nice understated (Apple-style) way of conveying new mail without affesting the Leopard template at all would simply be to make the unread-mail circle a different colour when some of it was new since last visit, then it wouldn't even require a new icon. nice and tidy, and performing a small-but-common-sense function, especially for bloggers, which i do when not mixing. so this little inconvenience from my routine (being immediately otified of new mail) irks me, but not enough to elclipse the musical perks.
the other thing, equally small but nonetheless ordinary on windozers, is that i prefer the bottom of the screen be used as an active-window dock, with everything you've got going with its name on a conveniently-togglable button, at a glance. on Macs you have to click and hold on the various programs' icons (Mail, Safari, System etc) to get a scroll list of the active windows in each app, as opposed to an at-a-glance list of buttons at screen bottom. (on windoze machines this area occupies the space occupied by the program dock on the Mac, the contents of which is stacked in the "Start" menu in windoze, a better place for them IMO, and offers the collappsible "quick launch" area for those who want dock access). i know OSX has the area on the right side of the dock for minimised windows, but you can't tell their titles with those little icons, and windoze lists everything active, period, not just minimised, on the dock. i just prefer the windows dock/toolbar to Mac's dock, as gorgeous as Mac's is (and it really is).
the other issue is that when i use the "tap" function on the trackpad to scroll by placing the pointer over the scrollbar arrows, it drifts off the arrow in a few taps. no windows machine i've ever used has done this, and all the MBP's have done it, regardless of trackpad adjustments etc. again, there are workarounds like simply using the scroll keys, or 2-finger scroll, but this is how i'm used to it and more than the annoyance itself, it to me is simply below Apple's normal bulletproof quality standards, and is especially bumming given that even the cheapest windoze machines don't have this problem.
so, i'm getting an MBP as soon as the Penryns hit the street, because my art comes first. but i might very well boot up XP for the daily communications drudgery and only break out Leopard when it's time to rock and roll, but it would be nice to have Leopard tweaked a lil with the dock setup and Mail with a new-mail notification function, and i could embrace it more fully.
as far as the pointer drift when tapping in a single spot, though i can live with it, it really needs to be addressed, and my heightened annoyance at it - aside from the trait itself which is a step down even from my old toshiba rebate-coupon special - is definitely partly due to the "high expectations" factor not only stemming from the cost, but also because i know lots of Mac users and am finally about to join them, in the industry and whom i respect, who swear by Macs.
so i'm getting one, but those are my observations from what i think was a very unbiased comparison. if anything i was biased toward Mac, but these are the few disappointments i had upon actually playing with them, which i'd love to see addressed.
first the verdict: i'm getting a MBP to reap the benefit of CoreAudio and the generally music-friendly characteristics of OSX. i especially like the "native" MIDI services. aside from working well, i'm naturally drawn to the fact that the OS is designed with music production and performance in mind.
ok, i shared that first to show you i'm not a hater - quite the contrary - but i do have a few gripes, 2 of which can be solved by bootcamping xp (but it's ashame to have to, hence my sharing this), the latter i'm not so sure.
alright. so 2 things i'll miss from windoze are: the little "envelope" icon indicating new mail since last you visitted your inbox. the mac equivalent is the red dot with the number of unread mail in the box, period. but you have to actually visit the inbox to see if there's anything new, which is an unnecessary hardship when it's so easily solved with the new-mail icon. my suggestion for a nice understated (Apple-style) way of conveying new mail without affesting the Leopard template at all would simply be to make the unread-mail circle a different colour when some of it was new since last visit, then it wouldn't even require a new icon. nice and tidy, and performing a small-but-common-sense function, especially for bloggers, which i do when not mixing. so this little inconvenience from my routine (being immediately otified of new mail) irks me, but not enough to elclipse the musical perks.
the other thing, equally small but nonetheless ordinary on windozers, is that i prefer the bottom of the screen be used as an active-window dock, with everything you've got going with its name on a conveniently-togglable button, at a glance. on Macs you have to click and hold on the various programs' icons (Mail, Safari, System etc) to get a scroll list of the active windows in each app, as opposed to an at-a-glance list of buttons at screen bottom. (on windoze machines this area occupies the space occupied by the program dock on the Mac, the contents of which is stacked in the "Start" menu in windoze, a better place for them IMO, and offers the collappsible "quick launch" area for those who want dock access). i know OSX has the area on the right side of the dock for minimised windows, but you can't tell their titles with those little icons, and windoze lists everything active, period, not just minimised, on the dock. i just prefer the windows dock/toolbar to Mac's dock, as gorgeous as Mac's is (and it really is).
the other issue is that when i use the "tap" function on the trackpad to scroll by placing the pointer over the scrollbar arrows, it drifts off the arrow in a few taps. no windows machine i've ever used has done this, and all the MBP's have done it, regardless of trackpad adjustments etc. again, there are workarounds like simply using the scroll keys, or 2-finger scroll, but this is how i'm used to it and more than the annoyance itself, it to me is simply below Apple's normal bulletproof quality standards, and is especially bumming given that even the cheapest windoze machines don't have this problem.
so, i'm getting an MBP as soon as the Penryns hit the street, because my art comes first. but i might very well boot up XP for the daily communications drudgery and only break out Leopard when it's time to rock and roll, but it would be nice to have Leopard tweaked a lil with the dock setup and Mail with a new-mail notification function, and i could embrace it more fully.
as far as the pointer drift when tapping in a single spot, though i can live with it, it really needs to be addressed, and my heightened annoyance at it - aside from the trait itself which is a step down even from my old toshiba rebate-coupon special - is definitely partly due to the "high expectations" factor not only stemming from the cost, but also because i know lots of Mac users and am finally about to join them, in the industry and whom i respect, who swear by Macs.
so i'm getting one, but those are my observations from what i think was a very unbiased comparison. if anything i was biased toward Mac, but these are the few disappointments i had upon actually playing with them, which i'd love to see addressed.
This is an unfair argument. I am by no means a Windows fanboy, but I don't think it's as horrible as everyone's making it out to be. Yes, Windows gets viruses, but if you're not stupid and keep your virus protection up-to-date, it's almost impossible to get them. And yes, Windows does have bugs. So does OSX. Leopard INSTALL discs shipped with problems! Also, hardware problems on PCs are a lot easier AND a lot cheaper to fix.
Again, don't get me wrong, I prefer a Mac over windows 9 times out of 10, but don't bash it for having bugs when OSX has significant ones that are just less noticeable.
I completely agree OS X is certainly not perfect and don't say it is. Yes I like it but when errors come up it's just the same if not worse then some of windows issues and when you think of it apple only has to manage 6 computers it should really have less problems.
I positively LOVE my MB Pro... I of course have my Windows stuff in a virtual machine, but I won't ever buy another Windows box.
I've reloaded OS X 2 times--I "broke" OS X by installing some fonts and Adobe crapped out on me, the second time was when I got Leopard. I am always cautious of "upgrades" because of my experience with Windows PC's (I'm actually a Windows-based corporate IT admin, who uses a Mac) that upgrades aren't the best preference.
Other than that, I've had intermittent issues with my Airport card, my girlfriends Macbook (purchased a few months after mine) can connect to networks, and I can't. It's a royal pain at certain times, but not something to warrant a major fuss.
It's a great lil machine... I'm trying to persuade my father in getting one.
I've reloaded OS X 2 times--I "broke" OS X by installing some fonts and Adobe crapped out on me, the second time was when I got Leopard. I am always cautious of "upgrades" because of my experience with Windows PC's (I'm actually a Windows-based corporate IT admin, who uses a Mac) that upgrades aren't the best preference.
Other than that, I've had intermittent issues with my Airport card, my girlfriends Macbook (purchased a few months after mine) can connect to networks, and I can't. It's a royal pain at certain times, but not something to warrant a major fuss.
It's a great lil machine... I'm trying to persuade my father in getting one.
That's an advertisement for extending your AppleCare if I've ever seen one. But then I've only kept one Mac of mine for longer than the 12 months the original warranty covers
That keyboard issue should certainly have been covered under warranty... did you buy it from Apple??
That keyboard issue should certainly have been covered under warranty... did you buy it from Apple??
I guess you could compare a Toyota to a Mac.
I someone with a 2002 Prius and the main hybrid battery is going bad. Of course, it's out of warranty. So that means an out of pocket expense for them of about $4,000 according to the dealer.
With a Mac, if a unit is out of warranty, you have to pay ridiculous out of pocket costs to repair them as well even for simple things such as a hard drive or optical drive and just about everything else.
Where with Fords (and PCs) they're mostly user serviceable and the user can replace nearly everything at reasonable costs without worrying about destroying their system.
In general though, how often do you see fords in the shop? toyotas?